Reconocimiento y Medición de los Elementos de los Estados Contables

While the first chapter discussed Lewis’s answer to the question of myth as asked in the ancient and modern contexts, his full answer has yet to be seen. Yes, Lewis did have particular views on the nature, origin, and function of mythology considered as a phenomenon of human experience; yet, it is impossible to fully understand those views without understanding his view of what he called the True Myth.153 The True Myth is the gospel,154 which is the narrative of creation, fall, and redemption found in the whole of the biblical story, and, in it, the particular narrative of the Incarnation, the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ in history (I can see no reason why Lewis would not have agreed with this basic synopsis).

This chapter will not be structurally related to discussions over the nature, origin, or function of mythology as the first chapter was, though the concepts are present. The philosophical concerns of being, truth, and language will appear again, as these were Lewis’s concerns. The first half this chapter will be a somewhat biographical sketch of Lewis’s relationship to the question of myth. It is only somewhat biographical because its purpose is not so much to give an account of Lewis’s life, but rather to show how, from his childhood until his conversion, his experiences and his education gave him both the question of myth in need of answering and also a variety of dichotomies in need of resolution. These were the dichotomies of reason and imagination, of

truth and mythology, and of truth and affections.155 _{Each of these dichotomies and their} resolution will serve as the structure for the second portion of this chapter.

153 _{This term serves as a part of the title of the chapter, and as a technical term defined in the introduction.} 154 _{“gospel” is a word that means “good news” from the Greek euangelion, meaning a public proclamation}

of a favorable event; but it is euangelion on the basis of a story, a myth, not merely an event without either context or characters, and with universal not just local implications.

155 _{Affections is a term referred to in the last chapter in n. 140. The particular affection under discussion}

here is Joy, and it is most definitely an affection that motivated Lewis throughout his life and provided “direction” for his choices.

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The metaphor of a portrait painting, in which Lewis is framed by a surrounding landscape, was appropriate for the first chapter, and it is also appropriate in this second chapter. But this chapter shall begin much closer to Lewis’s portion of the frame, beginning with a biographical sketch and then widening the perspective to consider how Lewis used his new-found understanding of the True Myth and the way in which it resolved the dichotomies in his own mind, dichotomies relevant to answering the question of myth from ancient times.

Biographical Sketch

It was always like that with Fox; he was ashamed of loving poetry (‘All folly, child’) and I had to work much at my reading and writing and what he called philosophy in order to get a poem out of him. But thus, little by little, he taught me many. Virtue, sought by man with travail and toil was the one he praised most, but I was never deceived by that. The real lilt came into his voice and the real brightness into his eyes when we were off into Take me to the apple-laden land or

The Moon's gone down, but Alone I lie.

- Till We Have Faces156

At the beginning of this paper, Lewis’s reading of Longfellow's translation of Tegner's Drapa of the myth of Balder’s death was set as the prologue. It was one of three experiences which Lewis had while he was young that ended up enamoring him with myths and fairy-stories. This seemingly accidental fascination was brought about when Lewis was between six and eight years old (which would have been between 1904 and 1907). During this time, Lewis recounts that “I was living almost entirely in my imagination; or at least that the imaginative experience of those

The reason why truth is related to affections here is that, say, in the case of reason it is easy to see how it relates to

truth. Truth is that thought about something which corresponds to its being rather than not. Typically, truth is

represented to us in propositional content in the form of sentences with the context of language. But what about the

affections might relate to such? Are affections “about” something in a way which corresponds to being? At least

after his conversion, Lewis wanted to say that there is a proper relationship between the being of things and truth as a result of reason, and also between the being of things and affections as a result of the emotions, or feelings. Read especially The Abolition of Man, in particular the first portion, ‘Men Without Chests.’

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years now seems to me the more important than anything else.”157 _{Then, during that period, he} had three, what could be called, aesthetic experiences. The first he recalls in Surprised by Joy:

The first is itself the memory of a memory. As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult to find words strong enough for the sensation that came over me. . . . It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what? Not, certainly, for a biscuit tin full of moss, nor even (though that came into it) for my own past. . . . And before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased. It had taken only a moment of time; and in a certain sense everything else that ever happened to me was insignificant in

comparison.158

These experiences bear such quotation because it is Lewis’s own description of what he called

Joy, and what many have called Sehnsucht.159 _{The second is as follows:}

The second glimpse came through Squirrel Nutkin; through it only, though I loved all the Beatrix Potter books. . . . It troubled me with what I can only describe as the Idea of Autumn. It sounds fantastic to say that one can be enamored of a season, but that is something like what happened; and, as before, the experience was one of intense desire.160

The third experience is the one already referred to, and it is recounted as follows:

157_{Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 15.}

158 _{Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 16. Note how suddenly this first experience came. There is a kind of hopeless}

attempt on Lewis’s part to convey the connection between his thoughts at the time and the experience. The experience did not strike him without an associated cause—some might call it nostalgia on the basis of the fond memory of times gone by, but Lewis recognized this possibility but accounted more to the cause than that, probably on the basis of having actually experienced mere nostalgia before and finding it distinct. He never equates nostalgia with Joy.

159 _{Carnell writes about Sehnsucht in Lewis and relates Lewis’s experience and writings to the motif of}

Sehnsucht throughout literature in general:

This is a study of an attitude which has been responsible for some of the most powerful, and some of the most controversial, works of literature. It may be tentatively set forth as a special kind of longing—a longing difficult to describe, for two reasons: it is surrounded by a misty indefiniteness which seems essential to its very nature, and second, there are overtones of sentiment and emotion in certain expressions of the attitude which may seem mawkish when examined in cold prose. [Bright Shadow of Reality:

Spiritual Longing in C.S. Lewis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 13. (though, admittedly, Lewis does not

do a poor job avoiding “mawkishness”)]

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The third glimpse came through poetry. I had become fond of Longfellow's Saga of King

Olaf: fond of it in a casual, shallow way for its story and its vigorous rhythms. But then,

and quite different from such pleasures, and like a voice from far more distant regions, there came a moment when I idly turned the pages of the book and found the unrhymed translation of Tegner's Drapa and read

I heard a voice that cried, Balder the beautiful Is dead, is dead -

I knew nothing about Balder; but instantly I was uplifted into huge regions of the

northern sky, I desired with almost sickening intensity something never before described (except that it is cold, spacious, severe, pale, remote) and then, as in other examples, found myself at the very same moment already falling out of that desire and wishing I were back in it.161

It is accurate to say that these three experiences, which preceded essentially the whole of Lewis’s education, defined what he desired and sought for the rest of his life. Lewis himself comments, following these accounts, that “The reader who finds these three episodes of no interest need read this book no further, for in a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else.”162 _{These experiences would be the foundation for the dichotomies which would}

characterize his intellectual development; most of all, the dichotomy of truth and affections. Throughout his life, he would need to wonder whether or not what he felt about the world had any connection whatsoever with reality. Until he became a Christian, he would generally dismiss such longings as mere emotional experiences with no bearing upon truth about being. Of course, this would always be admitted by Lewis only with a torn heart—he never truly forgot the

experience of Joy even as a materialist.163

161 _{Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 17.} 162 _{Ibid., 17.}

163 _{It is hard not to hear an echo of Lewis’s childhood experiences with Joy when reading,}

But only the strange power

Of unsought Beauty in some casual hour Can build a bridge of light or sound or form

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It is of some note that these things took place to Lewis in the order that they did. The first experience was unattached to any literary or mythic context and may have been forgotten by Lewis over the years who would have had no definite object of desire to return to in order to find again the Joy he had experienced. But the second was attached to the reading of a literary work; it may be fair to say that if Lewis was already a reader up till that point, his fate as a reader of fiction and faerie was sealed by Squirrel Nutkin. Finally, if he had not been so suddenly struck by the myth of Balder and attached his experience of Joy to the mythic sort of stories, we may not have been privy to the insights of Lewis on the aspects of mythology, since he pursued a study of mythology throughout his life not out of professional interests, but intensely personal ones.

Following these experiences—which were also followed by or accompanied by the death of Lewis’s mother—164_{Lewis began his formal education away from home. If those three} experiences had been glimpses of a paradise unknown, it was nonetheless a paradise lost too soon for the young Lewis, who went from losing his mother to going away from home to an

To lead you out of all this strife and storm. . . . One moment was enough,

We know we are not made of mortal stuff. . . . For we have seen the Glory—we have seen.

- Spirits in Bondage, XV. Dungeon Grates

For Lewis, “One moment was enough” to awaken him to something about the being of things that he was unaware of beforehand. And this was written by Lewis in 1919, sometime before becoming a Christian. Though, at the time of writing this, Lewis was affirming the goodness of “Spirit” over against an evil or ambiguous “Nature,” or mere matter [cf. Adam Barkman, C.S. Lewis & Philosophy as a Way of Life, 109-110 and 30-34]. This period of time [1918-1920] existed in the in between of Lewis being a materialist of some kind, first a Lucretian materialist (atoms and void and evolution is all there is) [cf. Barkman, 23-30] and Stoical materialist [“. . . everything is necessary and all the real philosopher—the man who lives according to his beliefs—can do is staunchly will what he wants, even though what he wants is necessary. . . Barkman, 36].

164 _{Lewis was not quite sure whether these experiences took place before or after his mother’s death: “I}

cannot be absolutely sure whether the things I have just been speaking of happened before or after the great loss which befell our family. . .” Surprised by Joy, 18.

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unhappy existence in a boarding school and then to some other (not much happier) schools in the following years.165

Three periods can be distinguished in Lewis’s education. The first was the period that followed his three experiences and his mother’s death when he was first sent to boarding school. During those years—between about eight and fourteen years old—he would pass between various schools, proving himself an adept student, but by no means did he have the chance to truly develop his talents. Yet, he did continue to read poetry and fantastical stories during this period, but he did this on his own account, no doubt, at least in part motivated by the Joy he had

experienced reading of Balder, and because of the Autumn-ness of Squirrel Nutkin. The second period of his education began when he entered William T. Kirkpatrick’s tutelage.166 There he prepared to enter Oxford and the academic profession.167 _{If there was any time in his life that} Lewis became aware of the power of reason, it was during this period. Yet, his love of the fantastical did not cease while he was with Kirkpatrick. If anything, it was during time that it matured even more.168 Thus, the dichotomy of reason and imagination was hardened into place,

165 _{Lewis provides an account of his schooling experience in Surprised by Joy.}

166 _{William T. Kirkpatrick was a Scottish teacher who had been a headmaster over Lewis’s father when he}

was a boy. Surprised by Joy, 128-131.

167 _{Lewis quotes from a letter that Kirkpatrick wrote to Lewis’s father about the younger Lewis, “’You may}

make a writer or a scholar of him, but you’ll not make anything else. You may make up you mind to that.’”

Surprised by Joy, 183.

168 _{Lewis, in Surprised by Joy, recounts reading the Iliad and the Odyssey in Homeric Greek (145); Dante’s}

Inferno in Italian (144); “Milton, Spenser, Malory, The High History of the Holy Grail, the Laxdale Saga. . . Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (both in translations), Apuleius, the Kalevala. . . [147]” All of these,

Lewis says were ordered and read by himself of his own free will in addition to his mandatory curriculum. And while at home over the holidays, Lewis recounts, “The long hours in the empty house passed delightfully in reading and writing. I was in the midst of the Romantics now [163].” He goes on to mention the numerous poetic authors he read—Keats, Shelley, William Morris and his mythological works: Sigurd the Volsung, The Well at the World’s

End, Jason, and The Earthly Paradise (163-164); he also mentions his developed familiarity with Norse mythology

[165]; also, “The Faerie Queen and The Earthly Paradise [174].” Lewis recounts more than these, but this list gives an idea of what he consumed during this time. Also, it was near the end of his period with Kirkpatrick that Lewis finally read Phantastes in 1916.

Now, to summarize Lewis’s attitude at this time, note how he describes it:

Such, then, was the state of my imaginative life; over against it stood the life of my intellect. The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side a many-islanded sea of poetry and

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unbroken until a later time. It was not from Kirkpatrick that Lewis learned to love more the workings of the imagination—that would come from his own continued readings. The third period of his education was at Oxford, which began when he took exams in 1916 through 1917, at the end of which he entered the British armed forces and was sent to the front line in France. Following his recovery from injuries sustained at the front-lines, Lewis returned to civilian life in 1918, and then went back to Oxford in 1919 to finish his requirements to teach.

After he finished his Oxford requirements between 1922 and 1925, Lewis began to lecture and teach at Oxford, which marked the beginning of his professional academic career. His education had given him tools for thought, both for reason and imagination.169 His earlier experiences of

Joy were still undergirding his interest in mythology. Yet, during this period, Lewis continued to

dismiss Joy and the myths that caused it as either auxiliary or adjunct in coming to a knowledge of truth.170 But a certain course of events began to take place (somewhat overlapping with the years of Lewis’s education but most of these events happening afterwards) which took the concern for mythology birthed in Lewis by desire and spun it all a new weave and pattern not before considered by him.

This new weave worked its way subconsciously into Lewis’s mind when he was still quite young—seventeen years old in October of 1916—while he was still being tutored by

Kirkpatrick. Lewis “picked out an Everyman in a dirty jacket, Phantastes, a faerie Romance,

myth; on the other a glib and shallow “rationalism.” Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless. [170]

169 _{Lewis would lecture and teach philosophy in 1924 and 1925. Cf. Barkman, C.S. Lewis and Philosophy}

as a Way of Life, 44. This would be how he would continue to hone his reasoning abilities and his philosophical

education. Yet he never left behind the life of the imagination, though it at this time it did not seem to play too much a part of his professional career.

170 _{This effectively cut off the imagination, the root of mythology, from the affections, the root of desire,}

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George MacDonald”171 _{and began to read. This was Lewis’s first encounter with MacDonald,} whom he would later call “my master.”172 _{He met there what he called “Holiness,”}173 _{and for the} first time the fantastic was, for Lewis, a window into the real world:

Up till now each visitation of Joy had left the common world momentarily a desert. . . . Even when real clouds or trees had been the material of the vision, they had been so only by reminding me of another world, and I did not like the return to ours. But now I saw the